the_lady_lily | Filmography

Robin and Marian

I sat down to this with G last night, which was very pleasing indeed, as it's been forever since we watched a film together. Netflix categorised this as a 'romance', although I'm delighted to say that it's rather more silly than that. Probably not intentionally. Filmed in 1976, it purports to tell the story of what happened when Robin Hood came back from going on Crusades with Richard the Lionheart, and was the first film Audrey Hepburn starred in when she returned to the silver screen.

Actually, there are a lot of Acting Names here - Sean Connery does Robin Hood opposite Hepburn's Marian; Denholm Elliott, who is just one of those familiar faces, plays Will Scarlett; Ronnie Barker is an excellently comic Friar Tuck, albeit with very few lines; Ian Holm has a cameo as King John, and Richard Harris has a cameo as Richard the Lionheart. Which was a bit scary, as I hadn't realised he was also Arthur in Camelot until I just looked it up. But yes, lots of Big Names.

This doesn't always mean the production values are up to much. As Robin and Little John watch the coffin of Richard being carried off, supposedly somewhere in France, G was in hysterics because the scene had so obviously taken place in a thoroughly English quarry. The fight scenes are bloody ridiculous. The jump from the castle battlements in Nottingham into a cart of straw is - well, comic, let's be honest, and Marian's final act (poisioning Robin and herself out of love, dammit, love, cue five minute monologue on how much she loves him and fading eyes) is a bit daft. That's the only point it gets really soppy, which is quite impressive considering she's just managed to commit murder and suicide in one fell swoop.

The dialogue is also a little bit - well, daft. There are some bits which are presumably meant as comic (such as the dialogue in the condemned cell 'how can you eat?' 'I'm hungry!', and Marian's complaint to Robin 'you never wrote', to which he replies 'I don't know how'), but there are other bits which, erm, aren't. Like when Marian starts reminiscing about how sexy Robin was before he went to war and how she tried to kill herself when he left. Without telling her. And he wonders why it takes some time to win her over, although (because it's a wonderfully cast Sean Connery) we do eventually get the line 'I've never kissed a member of the clergy. Is it a sin?'

Oh, and hugely homoerotic. There's blatantly a touch of all-masculine friendship going on between Robin and Will and John and Tuck, in a fight scene which turns into a huge hug-fest at the moment of recognition. DAFT.

So, yes. Completely daffy but good and undemanding to watch, and certainly doesn't try to get too heavy. Although there's a whole 'woman sacrificing herself for her man' and 'Robin has a head of steel' thing, and the inevitable failure of the creation of Sherwood again (the omens, with Frankish cavalry persuing the greensmen, do not look good). Bit of a depressing ending, but thankfully it doesn't drag on for more than ten minutes, and it's got Audrey Hepburn gushing and Sean Connery being all brave, which means you can put up with that much of it. Three stars.